On a piece of toilet paper
Afloat in the unflushed piss,
The fully printed lips of a woman.
Nathan, cheer up! The sewer
Sends you a big red kiss.
Ah, nothing’s wasted, if it’s human.
– Leonard Nathan
July 2008
She lay on her back in the timothy
and gazed past the doddering
auburn heads of sumac.
A cloud—huge, calm,
and dignified—covered the sun
but did not, could not, put it out.
The light surged back again.
Nothing could rouse her then
from that joy so violent
it was hard to distinguish from pain.
— Jane Kenyon
Cat, if you go outdoors, you must walk in the snow.
You will come back with little white shoes on your feet,
little white shoes of snow that have heels of sleet.
Stay by the fire, my Cat. Lie still, do not go.
See how the flames are leaping and hissing low,
so white and so smooth, so spherical and so sweet—
stay with me, Cat. Outdoors the wild winds blow.
Outdoors the wild winds blow, Mistress, and dark is the night,
strange voices cry in the trees, intoning strange lore,
and more than cats move, lit by our eyes’ green light,
on silent feet where the meadow grasses hang hoar—
Mistress, there are portents abroad of magic and might,
and things that are yet to be done. Open the door!
— Elizabeth Coatsworth
